- 6 months ago
That Make no Sense
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00:00In June 2014, a 28-year-old German man named Lars Matank traveled to Varna, Bulgaria with a group of friends.
00:08They were on vacation enjoying the beach town, the cheap drinks, and the nightlife.
00:12Lars was by all accounts a calm, quiet guy.
00:16He wasn't someone known to get into fights or cause trouble.
00:19But while out one night at a bar, Lars reportedly got into an argument with a group of local men, possibly over a football rivalry.
00:26The fight left him with a ruptured eardrum, which meant he couldn't fly home with his friends.
00:32The doctor told him he needed to stay behind and let it heal.
00:35His friends offered to stay with him, but Lars insisted they return to Germany without him.
00:40He claimed he'd be fine, he just needed a few days to rest.
00:44Alone in Bulgaria, Lars checked into a cheap hotel near the airport.
00:49What happened over the next few days remains one of Europe's most chilling disappearances.
00:53Lars began acting strangely.
00:57He called his mother several times, sounding panicked.
01:00He told her to cancel his credit cards.
01:02He said people were following him.
01:04At one point, he left the hotel in the middle of the night, claiming he was being watched by four mysterious men.
01:10He even texted his mom, asking what the side effects of an antibiotic he'd been prescribed were.
01:15His behavior kept escalating.
01:18The hotel staff described him as nervous, pacing, and constantly checking the windows.
01:23Then, on July 8th, the day he was scheduled to fly home, Lars arrived at Varna Airport, and things took a dramatic turn.
01:31Surveillance footage from the airport shows him walking into the terminal calmly at first, but within minutes, he appears agitated.
01:38He's seen speaking to a staff member, then backing away nervously.
01:43Suddenly, without any visible trigger, Lars sprints through the terminal, dashes through the automatic doors, and runs at full speed across the airport parking lot, leaving behind his luggage, passport, and all of his belongings.
01:55The last known footage of him shows him vanishing into the trees near a construction site.
02:01No one has seen him since.
02:03His disappearance has become a breeding ground for theories.
02:06Some believe he had a psychotic break, potentially brought on by a reaction to an antibiotic he was taking, or a latent mental illness triggered by stress.
02:16Others are convinced something more sinister was happening, that Lars was genuinely being followed or targeted, and whatever he encountered in those final moments was terrifying enough to make him run into the wilderness, barefoot and defenseless.
02:29There were alleged sightings in Eastern Europe for years after, but nothing ever confirmed.
02:35The strangest part is that his mother insists that Lars was not mentally ill.
02:40She believes he was in danger, that he may have stumbled upon something he shouldn't have, or gotten involved in something darker than he realized.
02:48The image of him running, wide-eyed and desperate, has been viewed millions of times online, yet no one knows what scared him that badly, and no one knows where he went.
02:59In 1912, in the small town of Opelousas, Louisiana, four-year-old Bobby Dunbar disappeared while on a fishing trip with his family near Swayze Lake.
03:10His parents claimed he vanished sometime during the day, possibly while wandering near the water.
03:16A massive search was launched immediately.
03:19Hundreds of volunteers scoured the area, dragging the lake, searching the woods, and even setting off dynamite underwater in case his body was stuck in the lake bed.
03:27But Bobby was gone.
03:30The town was devastated.
03:32For eight months, his disappearance became a local obsession.
03:36Then, in early 1913, a boy matching Bobby's description was found traveling with a man named William Walters, a traveling handyman in Mississippi.
03:46Walters claimed the boy was the son of Julia Anderson, a woman who had entrusted the child to his care.
03:51But the Dunbars were convinced the boy was Bobby.
03:54Walters was arrested for kidnapping.
03:57The authorities arranged for a reunion between the boy and Bobby's mother.
04:01At first, the boy didn't recognize her.
04:03Witnesses later claimed she hesitated, unsure if the boy was actually hers.
04:08But after spending a few days with him, she announced to the press and the police that he was, in fact, her son.
04:14Case closed, the newspapers said.
04:16Bobby Dunbar had been found, Walters was sentenced to prison, the boy was returned to the Dunbar family, and raised as their own.
04:23But there was a problem.
04:25Julia Anderson, the woman who had entrusted the boy to Walters, showed up.
04:29She insisted that was her son, Bruce, and that the Dunbars had taken him.
04:34She had no money, no lawyer, and no support.
04:37When the courts ruled in favor of the Dunbars, she lost custody forever.
04:42She returned to Mississippi heartbroken, labeled a liar, and an unfit mother by the press.
04:47For decades, Bobby Dunbar lived under that name, unaware of any of this.
04:52But in the early 2000s, Bobby's grandson began investigating the family's history.
04:58Something didn't sit right.
04:59Eventually, the family agreed to a DNA test, comparing Bobby's descendants to those of the Dunbars.
05:04The result shattered a century of belief.
05:09The boy who had grown up as Bobby Dunbar was not biologically related to the Dunbars.
05:14He was Bruce Anderson.
05:17Julia Anderson had been telling the truth all along, which means the real Bobby Dunbar was never found.
05:23To this day, no one knows what actually happened to him.
05:26Whether he drowned, was abducted, or suffered some unknown fate, his case remains officially unresolved.
05:32Meanwhile, an innocent man was imprisoned, and another family raised a child who wasn't theirs.
05:38All because the truth was too painful, and the need for closure outweighed the facts.
05:42In 1928, 9-year-old Walter Collins disappeared from his home in Los Angeles.
05:52His mother, Christine Collins, had given him a few coins to go see a movie while she was working.
05:57He never came home.
05:59Christine went to the police, who launched a search.
06:02His case quickly made headlines.
06:04This was during a time of rising fears about crime and child abductions,
06:08and public pressure on the LAPD was intense.
06:12For five months, Christine kept the search alive.
06:15She printed flyers, organized searches, gave interviews.
06:18Then, in August, police in Illinois picked up a boy who claimed to be Walter.
06:23He was brought to Los Angeles to be reunited with Christine, in front of reporters.
06:29But as the cameras flashed and police beamed with pride, thinking they had solved the case,
06:33when Christine saw the boy, she said,
06:36that's not my son.
06:38The police told her she was wrong.
06:40They insisted he had changed from the trauma.
06:43They encouraged her to take him home on a trial basis.
06:46Christine reluctantly agreed, likely pressured by the public scene.
06:50But after just three weeks, she returned to the LAPD and again said,
06:54this is not my son.
06:56This time, the police had her committed to a psychiatric hospital,
07:00claiming she was hysterical and refusing to accept reality.
07:03Meanwhile, the boy admitted that he wasn't Walter.
07:06His real name was Arthur Hutchins,
07:08a runaway who had been pretending to be Walter Collins to get a free trip to California.
07:13He thought it might help him to meet his favorite actors.
07:16So that meant the police had publicly reunited a grieving mother with a random child,
07:21and then punished her when she didn't go along with the lie.
07:24That should have been the end of the story, but it gets darker.
07:27Around the same time, a Canadian man named Gordon Northcott
07:31was arrested for a string of murders on a chicken farm in Wineville, California.
07:36He had lured young boys to his property, imprisoned them, and eventually killed them.
07:40When authorities raided the farm, they found evidence linking Northcott to multiple victims.
07:45One of those victims, they believed, was Walter Collins.
07:49Christine pleaded for answers, but Northcott never gave a clear confession.
07:53He was convicted for other murders, but the fate of Walter Collins remained unresolved.
08:00Christine spent the rest of her life trying to find out what happened.
08:03She never gave up, and the city of Los Angeles never formally apologized for what they did to her,
08:08for locking her away when she refused to accept the lie.
08:11The story later inspired the film Changeling with Angelina Jolie,
08:16but the real horror is how it actually happened.
08:19A grieving mother gaslit by the system,
08:21a lost child exploited for headlines,
08:24and a police force more interested in good press than truth.
08:27In August of 2008, a 24-year-old Canadian woman named Kayla Reed vanished from a small town in British Columbia.
08:38She had recently moved back in with her parents after going through a rough breakup and was trying to start over.
08:44One evening, she told her mother she was going to meet a friend at a coffee shop nearby.
08:49She left around 7.30pm, wearing a light hoodie and jeans,
08:52carrying her phone but no purse.
08:55She never showed up for that meeting.
08:57Her phone went dark less than an hour later.
09:00What followed was an immediate and massive local search.
09:04Flyers went up, and volunteers swarmed the forested areas around town.
09:08Search dogs found nothing, and there was no sign of foul play.
09:12No dropped phone, no torn clothing, no surveillance footage.
09:16It seemed Kayla had completely vanished.
09:19As expected, her parents were devastated.
09:22Kayla was described as responsible and grounded,
09:25not the kind of person to run off without telling anyone.
09:27Days turned into weeks, and weeks turned into months.
09:31Eventually, the case went cold.
09:33But then, a full year later, something happened.
09:37Kayla showed up.
09:38In the early morning hours of July 5th, 2009, she walked into a hospital nearly 200 miles from where she disappeared.
09:46She was disoriented, dehydrated, and barefoot.
09:49She was also noticeably thinner, sunburned, and wearing clothes that didn't belong to her.
09:54She refused to speak to doctors.
09:56She simply wrote her name down on a piece of paper.
09:59The hospital staff called police, and after fingerprint confirmation, it was officially her.
10:06She had been missing for 11 months.
10:09Her parents, of course, rushed to see her, but even then, Kayla said almost nothing.
10:14She stared at them blankly, occasionally smiling, but she didn't hug them.
10:18When they asked where she had been, she said only,
10:21I was in the dark.
10:23I was safe, but it wasn't me.
10:26Authorities were baffled.
10:27She had no visible injuries or signs of abuse.
10:30Toxicology came back clean.
10:33She had no head trauma, no signs of having been drugged long term,
10:37no tattoos or branding or anything that would suggest organized abduction.
10:40She spent a week in the hospital under psychiatric observation,
10:45and then she was quietly released to her family.
10:48No charges were filed, and no statements were ever made.
10:52Kayla never spoke publicly about where she had been.
10:55She deleted all her social media accounts and moved away within a year.
10:59Reporters tried to follow up, but her family refused all interviews.
11:03The case was officially closed, a missing person who returned,
11:07but no one ever got the answers they were looking for.
11:10Just a young woman who came back from somewhere completely changed.
11:14She wasn't hurt or injured, but she was different.
11:18One nurse from the hospital said that in her last shift before Kayla was discharged,
11:22the girl looked her dead in the eyes and whispered,
11:24Don't go into the woods alone, they find you there.
11:28No one knows what she meant, but no one who worked that case ever forgot it.
11:35In October 2017, in the city of Santa Rosa, California,
11:39a 15-year-old high school student named Connor Hastings disappeared while walking home from school.
11:46He took the same route every day, a suburban street surrounded by homes and parks,
11:50but one afternoon, he didn't show up.
11:53His mom called him, but there was no answer.
11:56When she checked with friends, no one had seen him since he left school.
11:59By 7 p.m., police were notified, and a search began immediately.
12:04His backpack was found a day later, dumped behind a dumpster a few blocks from his usual route,
12:09but his phone was gone.
12:10For weeks, the case dominated local headlines.
12:13Police dogs tracked a scent trail that ended suddenly at the edge of a wooded trail,
12:18where it seemed to just stop.
12:20It was strange because no tire tracks were left behind, and there were zero witnesses.
12:24When detectives questioned classmates, rumors began spreading.
12:29Some kids claimed Connor had been acting paranoid in the days just before he went missing,
12:33like he was jumping at noises and asking people if they'd seen the man in the red jacket.
12:38One friend said Connor had recently asked about how to tell if you're being watched.
12:42The trail went cold, but five minutes later, in March of 2018,
12:46Connor returned, or rather, he was found.
12:49A 911 call came in from a payphone, one of the few still operating in the area,
12:55and the caller reported a teenage boy sitting on a bench,
12:59unresponsive, outside a small-town library 60 miles away.
13:03When police found Connor, he was silent and staring ahead.
13:07His hair was much longer than when he'd last been seen, and his clothes were filthy.
13:12He had a spiral-bound notebook clutched in both hands, but it was completely blank.
13:16He wouldn't speak for over 24 hours.
13:20When his parents arrived, he hugged his mother tightly and then burst into tears.
13:25But even then, he said very little about where he had been.
13:29Over the next few days, he opened up only slightly.
13:32He claimed he had been taken by a group, but couldn't describe their faces.
13:37He said they kept him somewhere without clocks, somewhere cold.
13:40When police asked how he escaped, he said,
13:43They just let me go.
13:45I think I passed their test.
13:47A month later, he gave one final statement before refusing to speak publicly again.
13:52He said,
13:53There were others.
13:54I heard them.
13:55I wasn't the only one.
13:57But I might be the only one they gave back.
14:00The notebook he had been holding the night he was found remained empty.
14:03No one could get him to write anything in it.
14:05But on the final page, in the bottom corner, written in shaky pen, were four words.
14:11I was not alone.
14:13Police never identified any suspects.
14:16The FBI reviewed the case, but released no findings.
14:20Connor eventually changed schools and now lives under a different name.
14:23To this day, his case is officially solved, because he came back.
14:27But nobody really believes that that's the end of the story.
14:36On the night of February 9th, 2004, a 21-year-old nursing student named Maura Murray vanished after a minor car crash on a remote stretch of Route 112 in Haverhill, New Hampshire.
14:49Nearly two decades later, no one knows where she went, what she was running from, or who might have been waiting for her.
14:55Earlier that day, Maura left her dorm at UMass Amherst after sending emails to her professors, telling them there had been a death in the family and she'd be gone for a few days.
15:05But no one in her family had died.
15:07In fact, no one in her life was planning to leave.
15:11She packed a bag, withdrew nearly all the money from her bank account, and bought a few items, including alcohol from a nearby store.
15:18Then she drove north into the White Mountains, alone and quietly, without a clear destination.
15:25At approximately 7.27 p.m., a local woman called 911 to report a car accident outside her house.
15:32A small black Saturn had crashed into a snowbank on a sharp turn.
15:37When police arrived 20 minutes later, they found the vehicle, but no sign of the driver.
15:43The car was locked, and the windshield was cracked.
15:45Both airbags had deployed.
15:47A box of wine was spilled across the interior.
15:50The only thing missing was Maura.
15:52A bus driver who lived nearby had seen her just minutes before police arrived.
15:57He stopped and spoke to her through the window.
16:00She looked cold and shaken, but declined help.
16:03He drove off and called in the accident, but by the time the officers reached the scene, Maura had vanished.
16:10Not just walked away, vanished.
16:13Police dogs tracked her scent for about 100 yards up the road.
16:16Then it stopped abruptly.
16:17No footprints in the woods or any belongings left behind.
16:21It was like someone picked her up in a car just out of view.
16:25Her phone and credit cards were never used again.
16:28The bottles of alcohol she had bought, some were gone, and some remained in the car.
16:33There were no obvious signs of foul play, but nothing added up.
16:36She had no history of mental illness.
16:39Friends and family said she wasn't suicidal.
16:41She was planning for the future.
16:43And yet, she was gone.
16:45In the years that followed, her case became one of the most obsessively followed mysteries on the internet.
16:50Armchair detectives, forums, and podcasters picked apart every detail.
16:55Some believed she staged her disappearance to start a new life.
16:59Others believed she was abducted by a stranger or someone she arranged to meet.
17:03Then there are darker theories.
17:04A serial predator operating in the mountains, or a cover-up.
17:09But nothing concrete ever came, and her body was never found.
17:13Something obviously happened to Maura Murray that night.
17:15Something that was likely deliberate.
17:17And to this day, the forest around Route 112 still holds its secrets.
17:22And the most chilling part is if she was taken,
17:25whoever did it knew exactly what they were doing, and never made a single mistake.
17:28In the remote town of Nome, Alaska, a place isolated by hundreds of miles of tundra,
17:37accessible mostly by air, people are used to strange things happening.
17:41The winters are long and brutal, and the nights seem endless.
17:44But even there, among the quiet, snow-covered streets and howling wind,
17:49the disappearance of Rick Hills in 2004 is something people still whisper about.
17:54Not because it was the only one, but because of how it happened, and what was left behind.
17:59Rick Hills was a 37-year-old electrician.
18:02Hard-working, quiet, not particularly social, but he was well-liked by the people who knew him.
18:08He lived alone in a small cabin on the outskirts of town, near the edge of the wilderness.
18:14It was not unusual in Nome to be that isolated.
18:17Many people preferred it.
18:18But Rick's case became more disturbing when it was discovered he wasn't the first one to go missing from that area.
18:24In fact, in the 10 years before he vanished,
18:26over 20 people had disappeared from Nome under similarly strange circumstances.
18:31The FBI would eventually investigate it as a pattern.
18:34But Rick's story was different.
18:36More personal and terrifying.
18:39On November 13, 2004, Rick failed to show up for work.
18:43His boss called him repeatedly, to no avail.
18:47That evening, a co-worker drove to Rick's cabin.
18:50His truck was there and the lights were off.
18:52It had snowed lightly that afternoon, but when they got closer, they noticed something strange.
18:58No footprints in or out of the cabin.
19:01It was like Rick had never left or returned.
19:04The co-worker knocked, but there was no response.
19:06So he walked around the property and saw that the back door was open.
19:10He called out and stepped inside.
19:13The place was undisturbed.
19:15The coffee pod was full and his cell phone was on the table, but there was no sign of Rick himself.
19:20The weirdest part was the bed was made, not like someone had just gotten out of it.
19:25The weird part was that the bed was made so neatly, it looked as though no one had ever been in it.
19:30The co-worker called the police and they searched the home, then they searched the surrounding area, and then the woods.
19:37They brought dogs, drones, helicopters, and still found nothing.
19:42Even with the light snowfall, there should have been some sign of direction, like a trail or blood or something, but there was no trace.
19:49The man walked out of his cabin with no coat, no boots, no keys, and simply just disappeared.
19:56The investigation didn't find foul play.
19:58He reportedly had no enemies or debts.
20:01Even his bank account was untouched, and his phone had not pinged a tower since the day before.
20:06But then, two days later, something happened that the public wasn't told about until years later.
20:12A hiker, about 30 miles north of Nome, found something bizarre.
20:17A man's sock, frozen into the mud of a game trail.
20:21Nearby, hidden under a thin layer of snow, was an old Polaroid photograph.
20:25It was dirty and crumpled, and its image nearly destroyed by the cold.
20:29But the outline was clear.
20:31It was Rick's cabin, shot from the woods.
20:35The angle showed the living room window, and in the reflection was a face, but it wasn't Rick's.
20:40The photo was turned over to the police, but they never released it to the public.
20:45Years later, an officer who worked the case anonymously told the local journalist that it was the most disturbing thing he'd ever seen in his career.
20:52That the face in the reflection didn't look entirely human.
20:55He described it as off, like distorted, pale, the eyes too wide, and the mouth slightly open, as if it had been caught mid-whisper.
21:03Like someone caught staring who didn't expect to be seen, as he described it.
21:07The area was searched again, but nothing was found, and no further signs of Rick.
21:13Locals started calling it the Watcher, saying something in the woods had been taking people.
21:18The disappearances dated back decades.
21:21Natives had legends about the Darkman, a thing that lived between the trees and came out at night.
21:26When the FBI eventually got involved, they said the disappearances were likely due to weather, accidents, and alcohol.
21:33But not Rick.
21:34People close to the case knew better.
21:37They knew it wasn't weather, and it wasn't a misadventure.
21:40Rick was used to those woods.
21:41He wouldn't have wandered out barefoot without a jacket in sub-zero temperatures.
21:45He would not have left his door open, and he wouldn't have vanished without a single track in the snow.
21:50To this day, Rick Hills has never been found.
21:54Some say it was just a tragic accident.
21:56Others say Rick saw something he shouldn't have.
21:59Something that was watching him.
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